SAP Group Reporting is the new consolidation solution for SAP that provides functions for group accounting and management reporting on the S/4HANA platform. This solution has been delivered by the organization on the 1809 release, and offers support for functions like process control, data collection, data quality control, consolidation, and reporting.
SAP has made a lot of investment in its S/4HANA 2020 release to give this solution all the functionality, power, and experience of all other SAP consolidation solutions. Available as a cloud, and in an on-premises version, it runs directly on the financial data in the S/4HANA system.
Since both local and group closing activities are in the same database within SAP S/4HANA, the new Group Reporting tool provides a smooth process between them. Moreover, SAP S/4HANA is well-integrated with SAP Analytics Cloud and offers the following facilities:
- It allows direct access to legal and management accounting from the universal journal. This does not require an Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) or data warehousing tool to move the financial records from the transaction system to the consolidation system.
- It permits customers to perform consolidation and planning activities in a single application and in real-time. They are also able to gain a detailed perspective of the business at any point in time.
- This fastens up the closing process and in turn, there is more time available to analyze and make business decisions upon the results.
- The Financial Statement (FS) Items are introduced, and the Group Chart of Accounts are replaced. These FS Items are setup and maintained inside Group Reporting, which means the Operating Chart of Accounts is not affected.
- It allows sharing of rule-based eliminations, validations, and reports by desired breakdown items for both local and group closing activities.
- It enables drill down reporting of the components of the entity, utilizing all the details of the underlying Universal Journal. These have the substantial granularity of data, and defines a clear roadmap for integration with SAP Disclosure Management.
All About SAP Central Finance
Formerly known as the SAP Central Journal, CFIN is a product and a deployment option for S/4HANA Finance that breaks out the Finance and Controlling (FI/CO) applications for the remaining SAP ERP via SAP Landscape Transformation (SLT) replication. It is a way to implement S/4HANA Finance without disrupting the user’s existing source SAP ERP systems and requires installing a DMIS software component and SAP Notes.
SAP CFIN can be used as a functional migration option, a flexible reporting platform for mergers and acquisitions, and a shared services system. It functions well via real-time replication of FI/CO documents as compared to the standalone BW and BPC investments that require data transfer via batch Extract, Transform, and Load (ETL) jobs.
With CFIN, it is possible to integrate Fiori, HANA Live or the new S/4HANA Analytics, SAP BW, and SAP BPC in real-time. This is done at the document level with financial controls and integrity that come with general ledger in addition to error and correction handling prior to posting via Application Integration Framework (AIF) functionality.
There is only one physical document for real-time processing and analytics in Central Finance that merges FI and CO together into a singular line-item table for “single source of truth” known as the “Universal Journal.” The accounting interface is directly replicated to the Universal Journal in CFIN, which, in turn, reduces the need for reconciliation, integration, batch processing and data replication.
Master data management is handled by Master Data Governance (MDG) in Central Finance. Although, the posting of central finance looks like a SAP ERP financial posting, it is linked back to the source system via reference to the document number key of the source document and logical system to which it belongs.
Central Finance can take advantage of solutions that were already centrally managed such as Financial Close Cockpit, Intercompany Reconciliation (ICR), and Financial Supply Chain Management (FSCM).
System Integration
SAP Group Reporting Data Collection module can be used to load data in case the part of the organization is not running within the S/4HANA Finance system. Delivered on the SAP Cloud Platform, it is an additional Cloud-based Data Collection application with native integration to S/4 HANA Group Reporting. It assists in data transformation and aids data access that is not in S/4HANA.
The system is connected directly to the SAP Analytics Cloud in case the user wants to imagine and present the figures or add advanced planning and forecasting. This cloud solution deployed by the user helps in gaining deep insights into the business with the help of reporting and data visualization that, in turn, helps in making better decisions.
With live data connections, the integration between SAP S/4HANA Finance for group reporting and SAP Analytics Cloud enables business analysis at a group or corporate level without data replication.
It is important to remember that there is a specific strategy to connect SAP group reporting to SAP Disclosure Management. This is aimed to help the user deliver the final stage reporting while SAP Disclosure Management is designed to produce, fill, and publish the financial statements and reports, with implanted workflow, collaborative and audit features.
Conclusion
Group reporting is certainly a way to take your organization’s performance to the next level as it enables the consolidation, creation and disclosure of reports that provide information on the performance of the corporate group. When used along with CFIN, it helps in gaining a better understanding of the financial transactions of the group.
